Bulk SMS Mobile news & special offers!!

A restaurant based in Kinross, Mpumalanga, South Africa recently changed one of their advertising campaigns from flyers to short messages. Permission was given to the restaurant owner by his regular customers to add their numbers to a list for promotions and special offers. The case study was conducted on a total of 600 numbers.

Once a week the restaurateur text messaged special offers to his customers and monitored the response. The restaurateur reported a 5% response on the special offers. According to standard print advertising, a response of 1-2% is considered good.

Added advantages noticed by the restaurateur are:

1. The sms serves as a constant reminder of his restaurant. (Branding)
2. Word-of-mouth advertising takes place as clients receiving the messages show it to family and friends and talk about it.
3. His sender ID is the same as his restaurant´s name enhancing his brand.

This restaurateur saved quite a bit of money as each message cost him only 30 South African cents (excluding VAT). Printing flyers and employing a person to hand these flyers out cost him more that 30 cents per flyer so he saved money. He is targeting a database of 3,000 mobile phone numbers, as it will fill all seats 7 days a week.

Other applications are:
Real estate:
Principals communicating daily with the sales agents sending addresses to view and "thought of the day".

Video shops:
SMS clients that are late with DVD or video returns - it is cheaper than phone calls

Corporate:
Use SMS to communicate with National representatives, drivers and management or communicate with retail clients.

Automotive manufacturers:
SMS is used to inform customers when a vehicle is ready for collection after a service and as a means of post service follow-up.

These are just a couple of applications for which mobile communication could be used, easing smaller business owners' marketing campaigns providing measurable results. Marketing is after all not worth much unless you could measure the results.

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